Daniel Hechter Collections

A Daniel Hechter collection is built to be worn, and the record filed here shows that principle scaling. From the boutique he opened in 1962, Hechter expanded his company over time into an international label that encompasses seven different collections — each one an application of his stated goal: wearable yet high-quality, creative fashion for a wide range of consumer groups. The sporty casual wear he became known for is the center of the range; around it, the collections reach from tailoring to the ski slope. This page holds the collections view of his record in this guide.

Work through the collections here, then use the fall fashions page to follow the autumn strand and the spring fashions page for the lighter season. The Photos section gathers collection pieces across the label's range. His official website is linked in the references.

One Goal, Seven Collections

The seven collections are best read as one idea at seven addresses. A designer whose goal is a wide range of consumer groups cannot serve that range with a single line: the collections divide his audience by occasion and by wardrobe — the tailored, the casual, the sporting — while holding the standard constant: high quality, genuine creativity, and wearability as a design requirement rather than a compromise. That discipline is what makes the collections file coherent across six decades: the label grew by addition, not by dilution, because each new collection had to pass the founding test before it could carry the name.

The sporting strand deserves its own paragraph in any account of the collections. In 1971 he became one of the first designers to produce clothing ranges for skiing and tennis — sports whose clothes had previously been equipment, not fashion. Filed with the tailored and casual ranges, the ski and tennis collections show the sporty in his signature becoming literal product, and they mark the collections' furthest reach from the Paris boutique of 1962.

The Paper Dress and the Wider Wardrobe

The collections also hold fashion's sense of play. In 1966 he worked with Scott Paper Company to make a dress out of nonwoven paper, achieving attention as an avant-garde work — a designer of wearable clothing demonstrating, once, that he could make a garment out of almost anything. And in 1989 the wardrobe widened beyond clothing altogether when he launched his first line of perfume, the collection idea extended to scent in the manner of the great Paris houses.

Read with the profiles page for the chronology and the runway page for the presentations, the collections give the full measure of the company Daniel Hechter founded with Armand Ornstein in 1962: Paris-born, sport-inflected, and built — collection by collection — for the widest audience a designer name can honestly serve.

Photos